February 26, 2018, by Words on Words

Second year – the future is near!

This blog post was written by second year English and Philosophy student, Emily Patel

Now that I am in my second year of university, many things are different. I am now living in a house instead of halls, and I have new modules. Both of these changes are for the better – although living in halls was fun and a great way to meet people, sharing a house allows more independence (though we could all definitely be a bit tidier). I am enjoying my new modules, for example last semester I studied ‘Romanticism’, which involved texts from the 17-1800s. Even though there was a lot of poetry which I found challenging, I found the coursework really interesting. We had a lot of choice over the topics we could write on, and I chose to explore how women are presented in Jonathan Swift’s texts (including ‘Gulliver’s Travels’) and Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice.’

Although second year has been going well so far, the daunting truth is that soon my degree will be over! So my aim is to focus more on what I want to do after university and possible career paths. This is quite scary as I am not sure what I want to do and as I haven’t yet found an internship that I want to do, I will try to do more research into this and further explore the possibilities that are out there to do at the end of the year because this will be my last summer before I finish university. Careers and Employability service has been helpful. I am doing a work placement module, in which members of the service talked to us about various skills (interview skills, writing a CV/ cover letter and more). They also hold workshops and presentations for various job sectors, so I would advise students to attend these to get all the help they can.

Despite the uncertainties of not knowing what to do after graduation, doing a work placement has been beneficial. I found out about it through the School of English, as they advertise many work placements which is suitable for people doing the course. It is at ‘Think for the Future’, a social enterprise which aims to improve students’ behaviour and other issues through mentoring and running workshops in schools around Nottingham. My role is their marketing and communications assistant, and I have particularly enjoyed bid writing (writing letters asking for funding to help the company), as I believe it is for a great cause. I have also completed various tasks such as posting on their social media pages and filling out spreadsheets with information on the students. This placement has given me the opportunity to work in a professional setting, for a company that holds values that I am passionate about.

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